{"id":495147,"date":"2026-02-28T06:55:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T06:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/495147\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T06:55:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T06:55:08","slug":"trumps-not-enough-and-he-knows-hes-not-enough-california-governor-gavin-newsom-on-populism-purity-tests-and-whether-hell-run-for-the-p","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/495147\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Trump\u2019s not enough. And he knows he\u2019s not enough\u2019: California governor Gavin Newsom on populism, \u2018purity tests\u2019 and whether he\u2019ll run for the presidency | Gavin Newsom"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you think of the politician Donald Trump\u00a0isn\u2019t, when you think of the norm he broke, the archetype he shattered, you might well picture a\u00a0man who looks a\u00a0lot like Gavin Newsom. Tall and handsome, hair coiffed just so, with a blond wife and four photogenic kids at his side, Newsom, who has been the governor of California since 2019 and is often described as the frontrunner to be the Democratic nominee for the White House in 2028<\/a>, looks the way professional politicians, and especially presidential candidates, look in the movies.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s dogged Newsom for years, that look of his, perennially suggesting that he is, in the words of one California newspaper, \u201ctoo ambitious, too slickly handsome, and too patrician-seeming\u201d<\/a>, especially for a populist age that cherishes the authentic and has no truck with anything either phoney or \u201celite\u201d. The elite tag especially has hung around Newsom\u2019s neck for decades, thanks to the fact that his ascent to the top of California politics has seemed smooth and unbroken, apparently eased by a childhood spent in the orbit of the Getty family, when that name was a byword for astronomical wealth.<\/p>\n

Now Newsom is bent on busting those myths, laying out in a new memoir a reality that confounds the public\u00a0image. Sceptics will of course assume that this is just another classic politician move: the book that precedes a campaign for national office. Even so, few readers of Young Man in a Hurry will come away thinking of its author as the \u201cPrince Gavin\u201d of his rivals\u2019 caricature. Instead they will see a man, now 58, whose story is far more complex, and interesting, than the haircut and smile would have you believe \u2013 one whose life might just have equipped him to win the most powerful office in the world.<\/p>\n

double quotation markMy sister and I raised ourselves on giant bowls of mac and cheese, and thought nothing of it<\/p>\n

When we speak, in a conversation that will range from a devastating family history to his knack for a stunt \u2013 handing out kneepads at Davos to those politicians and corporate titans he accuses of abasing themselves before Trump \u2013 he makes his interest in the US presidency clearer than ever, even if he doesn\u2019t quite say outright that he\u2019s running. If there was so much as a\u00a0scintilla of doubt about his intentions before we talk, not a trace of it is left afterwards. What\u2019s more, Gavin Newsom<\/a> leaves some valuable clues pointing not only to how he would seek the presidency of the United States \u2013 but why.<\/p>\n

Via a videocall from his office in Sacramento \u2013 the same office, he points out, where \u201cGovernor Reagan, not president yet, Ronald Reagan used to reside\u201d \u2013 he tells me that the new book \u201cwasn\u2019t done cynically\u201d, that it \u201cwasn\u2019t done intentionally\u201d as a political ploy; that, in fact, it came out of a rejection. In his telling, he had submitted a more conventional politician\u2019s memoir \u2013 detailing his handling of California\u2019s wildfires, the pandemic and \u201cTrump 1.0\u201d \u2013 with just one chapter on his own upbringing. The publisher read that chapter and said, \u201cHold on. I didn\u2019t know anything about this.\u201d What she had read ran so \u201ccompletely counter\u201d to what she had previously thought \u2013 the Newsom born with a presumed silver spoon in his mouth \u2013 that she demanded more.<\/p>\n

Gavin Newsom with Gordon Getty in 2004. Photograph: Eric Risberg\/AP<\/p>\n

This is what she had learned from those pages. That, yes, Newsom\u2019s father had served as consigliere to Gordon Getty, whom he had known since high school and, in that capacity, became exceptionally close to the family, to the point where he and his two children, Gavin and sister Hilary, would feel at home at the Getty mansion on San Francisco\u2019s Gold Coast, and would frequently accompany the clan on outrageously lavish trips abroad. Newsom describes it all: the teenage trips on \u201cthe Jetty\u201d, the Gettys\u2019 private plane; being kitted out by a tailor with the clothes he would need to be a house guest of the king of Spain; that time in Venice when he arrived by gondola at yet another party in a 16th-century palazzo, only to be greeted by the debauched face of Jack Nicholson. \u201cWell, well,\u201d said the actor, \u201cif it isn\u2019t the Getty boys.\u201d The young Newsom didn\u2019t correct him.<\/p>\n

But, the governor now tells me, \u201cTo work for them doesn\u2019t make you them.\u201d For all his decades in the Gettys\u2019 service, William Newsom \u201cnever made much money\u201d. He was paid a salary, but it was not enormous. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a financial relationship \u2026 it opened up the door of privilege and opportunity, but not wealth. My father passed with nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

That, though, is not the half of it. After Newsom\u2019s parents divorced when he was three, he was raised by his mother. She worked three jobs at once, one of them as a\u00a0waitress, and took in lodgers and foster children for extra cash. Gavin and his sister were latchkey kids\u00a0who shared a bedroom. \u201cWe were home alone for too many hours on too many days,\u201d he writes. \u201cWe raised ourselves on giant bowls of mac and cheese and thought nothing of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gavin Newsom with his mother. Photograph: Newsom Family<\/p>\n

The timber of his family tree is riddled with alcoholism and depression. His mother chugged wine from a jug, while her own father was so badly damaged by his experience as a prisoner of war, held by the Japanese, that he once pulled a gun on his three children, telling them very calmly, \u201cI am going to shoot all of you right now.\u201d He eventually took his own life.<\/p>\n

It can be hard to square all this with the Newsom persona California voters have known for so long. He was still in his 20s when appointed to his first citywide role in San Francisco by legendary mayor Willie Brown, whom Newsom succeeded in 2004. That year, Harper\u2019s Bazaar ran a feature on \u201cthe new Kennedys\u201d, which included a photo of Newsom in a tuxedo, lying on a rug alongside his then wife, TV host Kimberly Guilfoyle, also in evening wear, in the Getty mansion. The marriage would break up, Guilfoyle would go on to date Donald Trump<\/a> Jr, and she is now the US ambassador to Greece, while Newsom would marry Jennifer Siebel, an actor and documentary film-maker from a Republican family. But the image lingered.<\/p>\n

For some, the disconnect between that and the upbringing Newsom describes in his book is just too much. One former associate described it to the New\u00a0Yorker<\/a> as Newsom\u2019s \u201cI was born a poor Black child\u201d story \u2013 a reference to the spoof opening monologue of Steve Martin\u2019s 1979 comedy The Jerk. But Newsom is emphatic that \u201cthe press\u2019s one\u2011dimensional portrait of me\u201d is wrong, that he really did live in a \u201cduality\u201d, moving between two worlds: one\u00a0of scarcity and struggle; the other of fabulous opulence \u2013 and that, if\u00a0his\u00a0memoir reads like a strange mashup of The Great Gatsby and Hillbilly Elegy, that\u2019s just how it was.<\/p>\n

double quotation markI\u2019m a politician that doesn\u2019t read speeches. I don\u2019t look up and down. I\u2019m off script all the time<\/p>\n

Even those reluctant to concede Newsom his hardscrabble roots have to allow that he did face one obstacle that, on its own, puts the lie to the notion of his career as a smooth ride. He has what he calls a \u201clearning disability\u201d, in the form of severe dyslexia. At school, he says, \u201cI couldn\u2019t read, I couldn\u2019t spell, I couldn\u2019t write.\u201d (He is upfront that his memoir is ghostwritten.) He was sure he was stupid \u2013 \u201ca gimpy geek with a bowl cut\u201d \u2013 and he was regularly bullied. (They\u2019d call him \u201cNew\u2011scum\u201d, the same word hurled at him by Trump.) To this day, he can only read laboriously, underlining almost every word, then copying out the underlined passages to a notepad, and then copying those out on index cards, which he keeps in a voluminous filing system. He cannot read from an Autocue, at least not in a way most people would recognise as reading.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would never be having this conversation if it wasn\u2019t for the gift of dyslexia,\u201d he tells me. It didn\u2019t feel like a gift at the time, but now he can see the effect it\u2019s had. He is a \u201cpolitician that doesn\u2019t read speeches. You\u2019ve never seen me read a written text in a speech. I don\u2019t look up and down. I\u2019m off script all the time.\u201d In the age of populism, that\u2019s a boast. Given that authenticity is probably the single most prized quality in politics, and that the opposite of authentic is scripted, Newsom is happy to tell you he is literally incapable of being scripted.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s had other effects, too. He can\u2019t easily read words, so, \u201cas a consequence, you have to make up for that. You have to read the room. You have to have some emotional intelligence. You feel things.\u201d Besides, having to stand before audiences without the crutch of a text inevitably brings \u201canxiety and insecurity. And you try to make up for that. And the only way you can make up for that is hard work and grit. And you got to practise. So there\u2019s this notion of reps and resiliency.\u201d<\/p>\n

No one disputes Newsom\u2019s work ethic. As he puts it, \u201cYou\u2019re just not going to outwork me. I mean, you may think you\u2019re going to outwork me, but you\u2019re not. I\u2019m\u00a0going to read 10 times more. It may take me 10 times longer to read \u2026 [but] I\u2019m going to have to come prepared because, you know, I can\u2019t fake it. I can\u2019t dial it in, and I\u00a0can\u2019t dial up someone else\u2019s words that are put on a piece of paper, like so many others in my racket, in politics. And so I\u2019m going to spend 10 hours for 10 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

double quotation markIf someone else doesn\u2019t have that fire, that sense of purpose and mission, then, yeah, I could see myself stepping into that void<\/p>\n

The tuxedo photoshoot made him look like a playboy \u2013 and his dating life as a divorcee mayor in the 2000s kept the San Francisco gossip columnists busily happy \u2013 but he is in fact a swot: studying ahead of every meeting, ploughing through papers on his 90-minute commute, underlining and writing out lines. That\u2019s what he means by reps. For him, taking in information is like lifting weights: it requires repetition.<\/p>\n

The result is a wonkishness that, again, hardly fits the show pony image. When he appeared as a guest on New\u00a0York Times journalist Ezra Klein\u2019s podcast<\/a>, the two went several rounds on modular construction and the role of off-site manufacture in addressing the housing crisis. Newsom is a politician who feeds on a policy-rich diet.<\/p>\n

That habit was shaped thanks to a brief but formative part of his career, one that sets him apart from his likely rivals for the 2028 Democratic nomination. Straight out of college, which he had reached only because he had made himself \u2013 through hours and hours of practice \u2013 a decent baseball player, a left-arm pitcher, Newsom founded a business. A wine store called PlumpJack, in homage to Falstaff, which he set up in San Francisco and where he put his hands-on work ethic to intense use. (In the book, Newsom is at pains to make clear that though Gordon Getty was an early investor, he was one of seven or eight, each giving a modest $15,000.)<\/p>\n

\"\u2018I\u2018I could see myself stepping into that void\u2019: Gavin Newsom on fighting Trump and running in 2028<\/p>\n

PlumpJack proved a great success. It would eventually become an operation with four wineries, two boutique hotels, seven restaurants and bars, two clothes shops and 700 employees \u2013 among them, until her death at age 55 via an assisted suicide, which Newsom concedes was then illegal under California law, Newsom\u2019s mother. Its co-presidents are Newsom\u2019s sister Hilary and their cousin.<\/p>\n

Newsom says it was building that business that made him a magpie for the ideas of others, agnostic as to their origin, interested solely in what brought success. \u201cPart of being an entrepreneur,\u201d he tells me, \u201cis always casing other people\u2019s joints, constantly figuring out where your competition is going, what they\u2019re about to do, what are the trend lines \u2026 I took that and applied it to politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newsom (on left) with Billy Getty in the early days of PlumpJack. Photograph: Newsom Family<\/p>\n

He\u2019s making a point about policy and the search for best practice, but the political application goes wider than that. For one thing, if Newsom is the nominee in 2028, Republicans<\/a> will struggle to run what has long been one of their favourite lines against Democratic opponents: that they have never run a business, never created a job, that all they\u2019ve known is politics. His business record is one more way in which Newsom might be able to appeal to red state voters as well as blue state ones. Yes, he is the governor of one of the most liberal states in the union, having been mayor of one of the most liberal cities in the country, the mere words \u201cSan\u00a0Francisco\u201d usually enough to whip up a rightwing crowd. But, as the veteran Democratic strategist James Carville told the New Yorker, Newsom can get around that: \u201cPart of his selling will have to be, I can play in the middle of the country \u2013 I\u00a0can play freshwater and I can play saltwater.\u201d<\/p>\n

The family he has today will help. Like so much else about him, it\u2019s a duality. At first glance, it could have been designed to delight a Fox audience: the slim, blond wife alongside four kids, aged 10 to 16 \u2013 two daughters, Montana and Brooklynn, and two sons, Hunter and Dutch. But the blue state crowd will warm to the fact that Siebel has chosen to be known as the first partner of California, rather than first lady; that her documentaries interrogate themes that include the under-representation of women in positions of power and American notions of\u00a0masculinity. (Newsom\u2019s book describes the day Siebel told him about her experience at the hands of Harvey Weinstein: in 2022 she testified in court that, 17 years earlier, Weinstein had raped her in a hotel room.)<\/p>\n

Newsom with his wife, Jennifer Siebel, and three of their children in Los Angeles, 2018. Photograph: Kevork Djansezian\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Newsom\u2019s record is itself a duality. At one point, he tells me, \u201cYou\u2019re talking to one of the most progressive politicians in the United States.\u201d As if addressing the Democratic core voters who will choose a 2028 standard bearer in primaries, he rattles off the evidence, starting with the act that first made him a national figure, when just weeks after becoming mayor in 2004, he authorised the first same-sex marriages in US history, prompting thousands of lesbian and gay couples from across the country to head to City Hall in what became known as the \u201cwinter of love\u201d. (John Kerry, his party\u2019s presidential nominee that year, was said to have blamed Newsom\u2019s move for his defeat, by galvanising conservatives and evangelical Christians to vote against him.)<\/p>\n

But Newsom is just clearing his throat. He ticks off his tally of progressive achievements. \u201cWe have universal healthcare in California, regardless of immigration status and regardless of pre-existing conditions or ability to pay. We have the highest minimum wage in the United States of America for healthcare workers: $25. Fast-food workers: $20. $16.90 for everybody else.\u201d He\u00a0talks about the threat that extreme inequality between rich and poor now poses to the republic; one of his lines is, \u201cWe\u2019ve got to democratise our economy to save our democracy.\u201d He says that on so many issues that the New York mayor and progressive pin-up Zohran Mamdani<\/a> and the left argue for, California has already forged ahead. \u201cWe\u2019re being very aggressive calling out Trump and Trumpism, putting a\u00a0mirror up to this president and punching him back in ways that are very aggressive, not just stylistically.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s referring to Proposition 50<\/a>, the statewide referendum Newsom pushed last November, urging Californians to agree to a redistricting plan that would give Democrats five more seats in the House of Representatives \u2013 to offset the five-seat advantage Republicans had given themselves by redrawing congressional boundaries in Texas. It was a huge gamble. Voters don\u2019t always turn out for what can look like technical, procedural measures, and had Prop 50 lost, Newsom would have been tainted by failure, his electoral pull exposed as weak. Instead, it\u00a0passed by a walloping 29 points. Overnight, Newsom had established himself as a \u2013 if not the \u2013 leader of the opposition, a Democrat not looking to split the difference but ready to take the fight to Trump and the Republicans.<\/p>\n

Supporters of Proposition 50 in San Francisco, November 2025; Newsom applauds the first same-sex couple to legally wed in California, in 2008. Photographs: San Francisco Chronicle\/Hearst Newspapers\/Getty Images; Marcio Jos\u00e9 S\u00e1nchez\/AP<\/p>\n

And yet, that record sits alongside a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 as a\u00a0moderate Democrat, one that goes back just as long. Serving on the equivalent of San Francisco\u2019s city council, in 2002 he antagonised the left with a scheme called Care Not Cash, which slashed payments to homeless people, using the money to fund housing and help with drug addiction and mental illness. He says it worked.<\/p>\n

More recently, Newsom has angered the left again. Last year he launched a podcast, This Is Gavin Newsom<\/a>. He knows it\u2019s a cliche: \u201cYou roll your eyes. God, a\u00a0politician, an American politician, with a podcast and a\u00a0book.\u201d But that\u2019s not what riled many on his own side. It was his choice of guests. He has featured Steve Bannon and Maga-before-Maga talkshow host Michael Savage, whose longtime mantra was \u201cborders, language, culture\u201d. On his debut show, Newsom interviewed Charlie Kirk.<\/p>\n

Naturally, Newsom was denounced for platforming \u2013 he puts the word in quotes \u2013 hate figures from the right. What\u2019s more, on that first episode, Newsom mused that transgender athletes\u2019 participation in professional women\u2019s sports was \u201cdeeply unfair\u201d. The backlash was immediate. Many detected a political calculation, Newsom signalling that he understood the much\u2011discussed vibe shift revealed by the defeat of Kamala Harris a few months earlier and pointedly breaking from the activist left of his party.<\/p>\n

The governor insists it was nothing of the sort. His view was shaped, he says, by practical experience. Two years earlier, \u201cwe had some statewide championships in track and field, where there was a trans athlete that was successful in [defeating] another athlete. And there was tremendous controversy. We tried to accommodate for that and address the issue of fairness and some advantages that I think, by any objective standards, existed and persisted. And the difficulty was we couldn\u2019t figure it out.\u201d A year later, the issue recurred and, again, Newsom could not see a fair solution. \u201cAnd so Charlie Kirk asked me a direct question, and I answered it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says he\u2019s sorry that he hurt the feelings of some on his own side, but he thinks the response he got teaches its own lesson. \u201cFrankly, we were becoming a little too judgmental as a party \u2026 this idea that somehow you\u2019re countenancing a point of view or perspective by engaging in conversations, that somehow you\u2019re complicit \u2026 There was a purity test\u201d \u2013 according to which nothing less than total orthodoxy on key issues is good enough. \u201cI have a difference of opinion with my party on sports for transgender athletes. And there was tremendous judgment and condemnation for that point of view, somehow saying I\u2019ve abandoned the LGBTQ community. I\u2019ve walked away. I\u2019m throwing them under the bus. I\u00a0think it\u2019s that kind of tonality that pulls people away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newsom says he\u2019s interested in finding those areas where Democrats<\/a> and Republicans might come together. Just as likely, he wants to see where Democrats might win over former Republicans and gain their votes. He\u2019s back to casing the competing joints, looking for the clues that Republican success in 2024 left behind. He consumes rightwing media, watching more Fox\u00a0News than he ever watched MSNBC, now rebranded as MS NOW, and is particularly keen to work out how the right cuts through among young men. That\u2019s a trick Democrats need to match.<\/p>\n

Still, it\u2019s a duality: Newsom simultaneously the most pugnacious Democrat on the playing field \u2013 trolling the president with Trump-style social media posts, complete with capital letters and multiple exclamation marks \u2013 and the advocate of building bridges that might connect blue and red America. That connection has to happen, he says, because \u201cdivorce is not an option\u201d.<\/p>\n

Can you be both at once: attack dog and unifier? Newsom thinks so. When I offer a range of apparently competing strategies for opposing Trump, some on the offensive, some aimed at accommodation, asking which he prefers, he answers, \u201cAll of them.\u201d He sees no reason to choose.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, you can stand your ground, be firm, but also have an open hand, not a closed fist in terms of dealing with our common humanity. This notion that it\u2019s got to be one or the other, that\u2019s the tyranny of \u2018or\u2019 versus the genius of \u2018and\u2019 \u2026 I think there\u2019s nuances in life. It\u2019s\u00a0not\u00a0black and white. It\u2019s not binary. I think that\u2019s the way we need to approach life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newsom with Donald and Melania Trump after arriving on Air Force One in Los Angeles, January 2025. Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein\/AP<\/p>\n

He extends that \u2013 sort of \u2013 even to Trump himself. In\u00a0the book, he describes an encounter during Trump\u2019s first term, where the governor and the president rode on Air Force One together. The Trump that Newsom saw seemed eager, in private, to win him over, to josh with him, to be liked by him. He looked needy. Is Newsom saying he almost felt sorry for Donald Trump?<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wants to be loved. He needs to be loved. Yes, he\u2019s a narcissist. He\u2019s desperate for it. He doesn\u2019t care if he\u2019s the heel or the hero, as long as he\u2019s the star \u2026 He\u2019s broken in many ways. That\u2019s why he tried to break this country on January 6 \u2026 and why he will do more to destroy this republic, today, tomorrow and into the future. It\u2019s a tragic story, but it\u2019s a very human story.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, I think it\u2019s why he desperately needed to become president of the United States again. It\u2019s why he\u2019s trying to rename everything in his image. It\u2019s never enough, because he\u2019s not enough and he knows he\u2019s not enough. And I think the remarkable thing is how easy it is to play on that. How easily our foreign adversaries are able to manipulate him.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one thing to play him, Newsom says, \u201cbut you also have to stand up to him. You\u2019ve got to fight him, you\u2019ve got to fight the bully. I felt like the [Mark] Carney [at Davos] speech<\/a> represented that \u2026 [Emmanuel] Macron began to sort of lean into that. There\u2019s a new tone and tenor.\u201d He wants to see the post-1945 transatlantic alliance survive, he says, and that requires strength in the face of Trump. At Davos, he urged European leaders to realise that \u201cgrovelling to Trump\u2019s needs\u201d makes them \u201clook pathetic on the world stage\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve talked for a while and the subject can be avoided no longer: is Gavin Newsom going to run for president? I remind him that he once said that it\u2019s \u201cbetter to be candid than be coy\u201d. He laughs, adding, \u201cI shouldn\u2019t have said that\u201d \u2013 and so I urge him to be candid now. An easy question first. He doesn\u2019t have to tell me what he\u2019s decided, but has he made up his mind about running?<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely, I have not.\u201d He says he cannot know now what the moment will require in 2028. But he\u2019s clear that, if he runs, he won\u2019t be doing it to fill a psychic hole, like Trump. It won\u2019t be to make up for a lack of parental love. For all her challenges, his mother \u201cdid give me a\u00a0lot of hugs. And I was loved by my dad, despite the fact he\u00a0could never say it.\u201d If he does it, it will be because he thinks he can be \u201ca solution to a problem\u201d. He says that for a guy like him, who got a low SAT score of 960 \u2013 he urges me to look that up, to see how bad it is \u2013 even to be asked such a question is humbling. \u201cAnd so I\u2019m not going to say no, because I\u2019d be lying by saying that, but I absolutely cannot say yes.\u201d<\/p>\n

I push him a bit more. What if the threat to democracy is as sharp in 2028 as he believes it is now?<\/p>\n

He says \u201csomething shifted in me\u201d at two points in 2025. One was in January, just ahead of Trump\u2019s second term, when, as Newsom saw it, Trump tried to \u201cweaponise\u201d the California wildfires, seeking to extract political advantage from an opponent and a hostile blue state in distress. The second came in the summer, when Trump deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles, along with 700 active duty marines. They \u201cwere not sent overseas but were sent to the second largest city in the United States\u201d.<\/p>\n

Newsom surveys damage in Pacific Palisades, California, January 2025; members of the California National Guard in downtown Los Angeles, June 2025. Photographs: Jeff Gritchen\/ AP; Robyn Beck\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

That January, \u201cI was experiencing something I was not prepared for. A president-elect trying to take down an American city, trying to take down an American politician in a way that I, frankly, was not prepared for. Six months later, with the National Guard, I just started to shift tonally, my temperament, my approach.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says that he\u2019s on \u201cthe other side\u201d of that shift. \u201cThere\u2019s a freedom now that I feel. And I\u2019m running around Davos with kneepads, taking shots at folks that I used to admire and respect that I feel have sold their souls. And this is an existential moment that goes to your question. If someone else doesn\u2019t have that fire, that sense of purpose and mission, then, yeah, I could see myself stepping into that void.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not an announcement, but it\u2019s not far off it. It\u00a0comes from a man who has never lost an election and who always comes prepared. And he\u2019s preparing right now.<\/p>\n

Young Man in a Hurry by Gavin Newsom is published by Bodley Head on 5 March at \u00a325 (audiobook, \u00a314). To support the Guardian, order your hardback copy at guardianbookshop.com<\/a>. Delivery charges may apply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When you think of the politician Donald Trump\u00a0isn\u2019t, when you think of the norm he broke, the archetype…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":495148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-495147","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}